Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Lin Chia-lung/Facebook
Palestine as Akin to an Enemy State?
AN ON-THE-RECORD press briefing by Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung last week proved a bizarre exercise in diplomatic ineptness and tacit endorsement of a genocide.
Namely, in the course of the Q-and-A, Lin was asked three different times about Palestine. Rather than bat the question away with some response about how Taiwan cares about human rights and abides by international human rights standards, or even the cliche that the Middle East is “complicated”, Lin doubled down on support for Israel in his responses.
At times, Lin seemed unable to read the room. When asked if he was concerned that Taiwanese technology was used in Israeli weapons systems used to target civilians, Lin instead thanked Israel for standing up for Taiwan in international spaces and spoke of cooperation between Israel and Taiwan on drones.
To this extent, Lin seemed to even frame Palestine as though it were akin to an enemy state of Taiwan. Lin said that Taiwan “had no obligation to help states that do not help us.” Lin then went on to frame Palestine as “treating Taiwan badly” because of its embrace of the One China Principle and suggested that Taiwan should respond with similar behavior to states that treat Taiwan badly or at least treat them with indifference.
Indeed, Lin’s comments are strangely contradictory to the line that Taiwan often touts in international diplomacy–that “Taiwan can help”. Taiwan tries to find an entry point into an international community from which it is excluded precisely through aiding states that do not help Taiwan, whether that is in terms of infrastructure development, medical aid, or other means.
Likewise, Lin’s framing seemed to suggest a view of countries that accept the “One China Principle” as enemies of Taiwan. And yet, countries that accept the “One China Principle”–as distinguished from countries with “One China” policies–include France and Lithuania, countries that the Taiwanese government has welcomed support from in terms of freedom of navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait and vaccine donations.
Clearly, Lin views Palestine as associated with China and, therefore, an enemy. But what then of the tens of thousands of dead civilians? The mass starvation of children? Or that Israel has killed the most journalists in any conflict in modern history, according to the UN? It proves bizarre to make such comments to a room full of journalists.
One notes that in a past era, luminaries of Taiwan’s democracy movement, such as “Nylon” Cheng Nan-jung and Chen Chu, expressed support for Palestine. Despite his political origins as an activist one generation later, Lin either is clueless about the subject or has decided to turn a blind eye to the issue because of the political interests of the Taiwanese state. If Lin was previously aware of the issue, it is also possible that being surrounded by hawkish conservatives who seem supportive of Taiwan may have led to Lin internalizing their views on Palestine.
National Interest Over International Solidarity
BUT SUCH COMMENTS are not surprising. From the standpoint of the national interest of any state, it would always make more sense to back Israel over Palestine. Palestine is, after all, dwarfed economically by Israel, as the 151st country in the world by nominal GDP. Israel is ranked 27th in the world by the same metric.
And from the standpoint of any state’s military-industrial complex, it would make more sense to maintain ties with Israel over Palestine. After all, Israel is a leader in drone technology–the same drone technology used to terrorize and murder Palestinians on a daily basis. Israel can also provide offerings such as the advanced spyware Pegasus. Lin’s comments, then, reflect the standpoint of national interest in which human rights are subordinate to national interest.
Lin’s comments framing Palestine are ironic in that he seems unaware that China maintains substantial economic and technological ties with Israel in spite of its token gestures at pro-Palestine rhetoric. China was the top exporter of goods to Israel in 2024 and is Israel’s largest trading partner in Asia. China’s ambassador to Israel has spoken of the abiding friendship between “Chinese civilization” and “Jewish civilization” in public comments.
Given its economic and political heft in the world, China could have played a valuable role in ending the genocide through sanctions against Israel or by intervening to provide aid in Gaza. It did not do this.
And if there is backlash against China and its collaborator, Russia, after it did not veto a US plan to assume governance of Gaza that was voted on at the UN, but merely abstained, this all goes to show where China’s actual intentions are. China uses the issue of Palestine in order to build up international legitimacy as a champion of the Third World and to erode away at the political legitimacy of the US. But, in truth, China maintains substantial economic ties with Israel and does little for Palestine. When it comes to China’s recent actions at the UN, one suspects China simply wished for the issue of Palestine to go away so that it could resume business as usual with Israel.
Indeed, this has broadly been the case. In Indonesia, Palestine is a popular issue, seeing as the country is the world’s largest majority Muslim nation. Even so, the Indonesian government, which has seen mass protests over moves seen as pushing the country back to its authoritarian past, has maintained trade ties with Israel while purchasing Pegasus for use against Indonesian activists–even as publicly claiming to criticize Israel, and moving against it at the International Court of Justice.
As for Taiwan, one notes further that Taiwan’s most important political relationship is with the US. With the rising perception in Taiwan that Taiwan has lost the support of MAGA Republicans, support for Israel may be an attempt to curry favor with them. Even so, it is relatively self-apparent that Taiwan’s view of what is “international” remains narrowly focused on the US, and Lai administration officials such as Lin do not seem to realize the potential damage to ties with European nations or Muslim-majority Southeast Asian neighbors through hewing too close to Israel–not to mention how this undercuts Taiwan’s efforts to distinguish itself from China as a democracy. Indeed, even in the US, polling shows a majority disapproval of Israeli military actions.
Taiwan’s stance on Palestine serves to demonstrate that much of the rhetoric about human rights and democracy that Taiwan clings to is only branding for the sake of soft power, so as to advance narrow national interests. When France suggested that it would move toward recognition of Palestine, as a belated move by the French government to cover its own inaction on genocide, voices in Taiwan expressed envy of Palestine, penning op-eds to the effect that Taiwan was more deserving of recognition than Palestine.
Such op-eds themselves often took the view that Taiwan was a more technologically advanced, larger economy than backwards Palestine and therefore more deserving of recognition, evidencing a racist worldview toward Arab countries. And one hardly thinks that Taiwan would want to pay the same price for Western powers to only now belatedly contemplate recognition of the enormous loss of life Palestine has seen
Such op-eds also took the view that Taiwan should be recognized and that Palestine should not be, rather than that both causes should lift each other up as fellow self-determination struggles. But this would be the pitfalls of a zero-sum worldview in international relations.
Solidarity, of course, only exists between peoples and not states–the national interest of states will always demand throwing oppressed minorities overboard to curry relations of power with Great Powers. It may not surprise, then, that this is effectively the worldview undergirding the philosophy of international relations that calls itself realism.
Yet the question of Palestine is for Taiwan not one of national interest, it is of the values that a society stands for and claims to uphold. For a society that differentiates itself from its larger neighbor through the claim that it is a democracy, one should expect better.